A painter of old churches

Architecture, says Goethe, is frozen music.

Contemplating the ancient Spanish churches of Luzon, Iloilo and Bohol, artist Felixberto C. Sta. Maria heard their music in his inner ear, and like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, was struck by a thunderbolt. In his twilight years, his mission is to recreate these historical monuments in his paintings.

Dr. Sta. Maria served as Dean of the College of Education, University of the Philippines, and as President of Far Eastern University. He has no formal instruction in the visual arts save for two meetings in a drawing class at the old U.P. Campus on Padre Faura soon after the end of World War II.

Fel – which is what this amiable gentleman prefers to be called – paints in watercolor and acrylic on Strathmore paper in the pointillist school. Watercolor and pointillism are not generally compatible but he manages to combine them by using a dry Chinese brush, and painstaking effort and infinite patience.

The churches that Fel has painted include Bacarra, Paoay and Candon in Ilocandia; Cagayan in Cagayan; Lallo Tumaini and San Pablo in Isabela; Betis in Pampanga; Barasoain in Bulacan; Morong in Rizal; Naic in Cavite; Majayjay, Alaminos, San Pablo Agustinian, Paete and Pila in Laguna; Taal in Batangas; Miag-ao, Iloilo and Dingle in Iloilo; and Baclayon (which incidentally still has its original bamboo organ) in Bohol. Most of these churches are still in use, the others are in ruins.

The Agustinian and Dominican frayles were the earliest church-builders. Adobe was the principal building material used. Construction was slow, taking from 10 to 20 years to finish. In some cases as in the Miag-ao Church, Chinese artisans were employed. As for the rest, the natives were conscripted to provide the labor force.

The architectural designs of these ancient Spanish churches are eclectic, a combination of various historical styles – traces of the Byzantine, the Moorish, the Romanesque, the Gothic, the Renaissance and, most ubiquitous of all the influences, the Baroque. It is not surprising to find in the same edifice a Greco-Roman pediment and dome, massive Romanesque buttresses, Gothic spires and towers and a Baroque sunburst adorned with curlicues in low or high relief in its flamboyant décor.

The bells of these churches were cast in Spain and brought to this colony by way of Mexico in the same vessels that plied the Galleon Trade. These bells cast in iron were of enormous proportions that their tones were believed to put the fear of God into those unclean spirits of the dark, which the natives called the kapre and the tikbalang, that lurked in the belfry.

In 1998, Fel gave an exhibit of his paintings at the Filipiniana Heritage Library of the Ayala Museum.

Remarked Dr. Alejandro R. Roces of the artist: "He has his own distinct style. He cannot be mistaken for any other."

Contemplating the paintings of Dr. Felixberto Sta. Maria, we also hear the music of the architectural wonders of our Spanish heritage and rediscover the splendor of our colonial past.